


Spiderskin

by ForASecondThereWedWon



Series: Spidey-shots, Spidey-shots, now they're done, thanks a lot <3 [30]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: F/M, Fairy Tale Retellings, Healing, Hurt Peter Parker, Prompt Fic, Protective Michelle Jones, Tumblr Prompt, Unhealthy Relationships, based on the Scottish selkie myth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:53:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24867895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ForASecondThereWedWon/pseuds/ForASecondThereWedWon
Summary: She pulled him in one day, like a fisherman heaves his catch from the sea.The sky was black with storm clouds and the wet window shrieked and squealed as she hauled it up to reach the figure behind the glass. She knew his face―everyone did―but she’d never seen it here and never like this. His red mask was torn and blood congealed along the jagged edges. Clinging to the wall of her building, he seemed to hold her stare for an eternity as wind whistled in and rain wet her bare feet and the rug beneath them. Then, he sagged over the sill, unconscious.
Relationships: Michelle Jones/Peter Parker
Series: Spidey-shots, Spidey-shots, now they're done, thanks a lot <3 [30]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1368034
Comments: 38
Kudos: 62
Collections: Spideychelle Week 2020





	Spiderskin

**Author's Note:**

> Created for Day 3 of Spideychelle Week 2020!
> 
> Today's prompt: Fairy Tale Retelling

She pulled him in one day, like a fisherman heaves his catch from the sea.

The sky was black with storm clouds and the wet window shrieked and squealed as she hauled it up to reach the figure behind the glass. She knew his face―everyone did―but she’d never seen it here and never like this. His red mask was torn and blood congealed along the jagged edges. Clinging to the wall of her building, he seemed to hold her stare for an eternity as wind whistled in and rain wet her bare feet and the rug beneath them. Then, he sagged over the sill, unconscious.

Swearing and struggling, puzzled and panicking, she gripped him under the arms and leaned back as hard as she could, lugging him into her apartment. It wasn’t easy and he didn’t come without a thud. She shut the window and paced. His limpness scared her as much as his bloodied face, but she was hesitant to remove the mask. That was his identity. Though seeing his face might solve the question of why he’d come to her, it was something she could never undo. She rolled him softly onto his back, a hand behind his head to offer gentler treatment than it had taken to pull him inside. Those cuts to his face frightened her. Would he revive on his own? Without the mask, maybe he could breathe better, see better, speak better to tell her why he was here, besides the obvious and dire need for shelter.

First, she knelt. Second, she folded the mask back to expose his neck. Third, she felt for his pulse. Strong. Fourth and finally, she eased the mask up to reveal the pale underside of his jaw, his chin, his bruised mouth, his nose that had lately leaked blood from the crusted track left behind. Before she reached his closed eyes, she knew. She knew him. She knew the eyes were brown and kind and that the pain she would see in them when he awoke was not something she would ever care to see again.

Removing the mask the rest of the way, she smoothed his hair and studied his battered face. She didn’t touch him beyond that. She was afraid to. He was a hero who came in with the rain and had transformed into the boy she once pined after in the halls of their school. He might dissolve into a hundred thousand drops of water and soak the knees of her pajama pants as she waited at his side. Could she hold him? Could she keep him? Could she be sure that he was ever here at all? Leaning forward, she allowed her lips to hover, parted, above his for no more than a breath. Then, she leaned farther and whispered his name by his ear. She drew back, observing the slide of his eyes behind their lids. This time, she spoke his name louder and he winced as he surfaced from wherever he’d gone to retreat from the pain. He was strong, she thought, to allow her to coax him back to consciousness.

When he realized where he was, she didn’t see remembrance in his face and decided he must have dragged himself there as the last impulse of a failing body. She made it clear that she couldn’t provide more than superficial treatment, expecting him to admit his mistake or offer further instructions, like the name of someone who could take care of him. She’d like it to be her, but his needs were unclear, his wounds unexplored. He promised her he’d heal on his own and promised again when she requested it, fearful tears coursing down her cheeks. With the assurance that he could move, not without feeling the ache, she clutched him to her and got him as close to standing as he could bear. She told him she wouldn’t let him leave and he accepted it, asking to be submerged in a hot bath. It was possible that her intentions were already what he would later suspect they had grown to become. The trouble and the truth were that she’d rescued him. Now, why should he not be hers?

His breathing was rough and his steps stumbled as she guided him, one hand on his ribs to accept his weight and the other with a tight grasp on the mask she’d retrieved from the floor. With a grunt and a heavy lean into the wall once her arm was no longer supporting him, he assured her he was alright alone. She left him dirtying white tiles and closed the door for his privacy.

The world came back to her when they were apart and she didn’t like it. She gathered what she needed and returned to the place where he’d lain, wiping away the grime and gore, cleansing the smaller, safer world into which she’d brought him. His gashes would close, his bruises fade to yellow and nothing―that was what he’d told her―and there would be no trace of this terrible thing. The sound of the shower drew her back to the bathroom door. He must already be steadier on his feet. One trace, she thought, listening to the water’s interrupted flow as it splattered his body. One trace would remain. But she could remove it.

He'd left the door unlocked at her suggestion, in case he called for help. Well, he hadn’t called, but she would help just the same. Soundlessly, she turned the knob. Heart thumping, she slipped through the slightest crack she could manage. Darting a glance at the opaque curtain that concealed him, she snatched up the suit, the mask, and fled.

What was this thing she held in her hands? That she bundled and secreted to the deepest corner of her largest closet, stuffing it inside an empty suitcase and locking it away? A bad thing. A martyr’s uniform. The fleece of a sacrificial lamb. A spiderskin, shucked and venomous. It had made him an amnesiac of his mortality, an idea that propped him up only to be struck down over and over. His intentions may have been durable, but his apparel was flimsy. She had to intervene before he ran out of chances to get home alive―or to slump through the window of an old classmate for reasons only he knew. Whatever the case may be. The key to the suitcase went into her tiny jewellery box and in his presence, it would never come out.

He staggered from her bathroom wrapped in a towel and cottoned in steam. He was clean, and pliant when she told him to sit on her bed and let her swab his cuts to prevent infection. She tended to his face while his eyes were closed, then his hands with his eyes upon her. Again, she volunteered privacy and left him with gauze and hydrogen peroxide to care for the rest of his body. Outside her bedroom, her face burned to picture it. At her name from his mouth, she re-entered to find him shockingly bare. Sure that it was only weakness that had made him drop the towel, then lose strength before he could draw the covers down her bed, she averted her eyes and lowered the sheet for him, continuing to look away as she took his hand in the firmest grasp she could give and helped him recline. But she wasn’t careful enough. He laid back and, with eyes that told her that letting the white towel fall had been a surrender in a mood beyond weakness, implored her to stay close by. She fell asleep at his side.

Hours later, with light streaming in, she was pleased to learn his recovery was underway. Without a word beforehand, she stripped herself of her pajamas and he rolled to cover her. They made love slowly. This was, somehow, exactly as it was supposed to be.

It didn’t happen once, but every morning before they worked on healing him. She’d found him clothes, though frustratingly, they didn’t stop the single question he posed each day as they laid in the ruin of her sheets, tangled in each other. He would ask where she’d put his spiderskin. She would say it was safe, then ask why he’d come to her. It was at that point that he would tell her that he had known. What it was he had known was something he kept to himself.

He wasn’t a liar; the gashes closed and the bruises turned to mustard, then butter, then nothing, his skin pale again and unbroken. He could walk alone with his back straight and he had a good appetite for the meals she ordered in, neglecting what rotted in her fridge. She no longer had use for the world outside. She had _him_ , and she could hardly take her eyes off him. Since school, he’d only become more handsome. Very quickly, she was in love.

As his condition improved, she noticed something that bothered her. Instead of occupying himself with a book or a show, he would spend long hours looking out her windows. What disturbed her most was when he chose the one through which she’d pulled him that night. Formerly, she had kept the windows cracked open in good weather, but now, they were always shut. For his safety, she told herself. This was nothing. She intensified her efforts to care for him. He was grateful, that was obvious, and he welcomed her touch, sometimes drawing her away from another focus to take her to bed in the middle of the afternoon. All of her longing was to make him as happy as she was.

Her friends were forgotten, her family put off, and the work she did from home all but neglected. She came to feel that she had stopped time to have him here. The choice seemed worth it for their blissful mornings together―before their ritual exchange of questions that went unanswered―and for the satisfaction of devoting herself to his protection. At first, she thought of the key all the time, but eventually, days toppled into weeks and she forgot that he might be motivated to remain for any other reason than loving her back. One evening, they shared a bath. With his arms securely around her as his hands lingered (without protest from her) on the task of soaping her chest, he murmured into her ear that he had used her computer to order her a gift. She turned to him, smiling, and if she could’ve acknowledged that there were other people on earth, she would’ve pitied them.

When the gift arrived, MJ buzzed the delivery person into the building to receive it at her door. With his gravitation towards the windows and the city beyond, she was reluctant to leave the apartment, even to go the short distance to the lobby.

He opened it for her, a box within a box, and she gasped at the jewelled, black flower he withdrew to hang around her neck. Though she considered it perfect, he was upset; several petals had splintered from the flower in shipping. She liked it better that way. Besides, perhaps something could be done with the pieces. It could be fixed. For now, she would keep them in her jewellery box. She whisked them away to her bedroom, unaware that he had followed her. Unaware that his superior eyesight would pick up the silver shine in the top tray of the jewellery box and, from across the room, identify it as a key.

Although they developed favourites in the litany of restaurants that offered take-away, she varied their meals, so it surprised her when he expressed a craving for a food she was unable to provide. But she could provide it, he encouraged her. The only thing was that they would have to buy the ingredients and make it themselves. Hating to leave him, the idea gave her a terrible feeling. However, he had lately been sitting at the window more and more. If this would cheer him up, she would overcome her misgivings and give him what he wanted. She was heartened by the passion of his goodbye kiss and promised a swift trip.

It was a shock to return to the streets of the city she’d been blocking out. She had never been afraid of it, only fearful on his behalf when it had sent him to her, wrung out by the demands of too many dangers and desperate people who would never understand the care he required the way she did. While she selected their groceries, clouds tumbled across the sky. As she paid, they darkened to a deep, ominous blue. She caught a bus home and jumped when rain struck the windows in a sudden torrent. At her block, she pushed violently at the doors and stumbled onto the sidewalk, instinct screaming that something was very, very, very wrong.

As fast as she flew up the stairs, as hard as she hoped, and as fiercely as she regretted ever having left at all, none of it mattered. She burst into the apartment and knew that he was gone. She raced to her bedroom. Her jewellery box sat open and there were clothes strewn across her carpet from where he dug the suitcase from the back of her closet. It sat open and gutted like a clamshell in the middle of her floor. She couldn’t bear to sweep her gaze across their bed, but tripped back out of the room, searching for a sign. When she saw the open window that the rain was now slanting through, she thought that was all he’d left her. As she approached, face already crumpling in despair, she spotted the note on the floor and picked it up before the rain could reach it. Finally, she discovered what it was he had known and never explained to her:

_I knew that you would help me, with no questions asked._

_I knew that you would love me, harder and sooner than I could ever have loved you._

_I knew that I would have to go back, and that it would hurt, and that I was no one’s to keep._

She understood that he would risk his life again. With ceaseless repetition, he would test his two skins until one or both gave way. Heartbroken, she crushed the note in her hand and flung it straight out the window, where the paper would turn to mush and the ink would bleed away. Her chest heaved and the necklace he had given her weighed against her skin. She held the pendant in her hand and raised it for observation. The flower would always be broken. Without its petals, it would always look, more than a little, like a spider.


End file.
